His Music's Dark Side Comes Naturally

Music - SOUNDBOARD

Steve Garron looks happier than you might expect for a guy who has had 30 surgeries, one for each year of his life.

"I feel liberated," says Garron, one of the most promising fixtures on the Orlando scene as the leader of Precious. "I have a whole new lease on life."

The band's label, Orlando's Cell Records, won't return his phone calls. They yanked the Precious site off the Web and fired the band's A&R guy.

Garron hasn't played a gig since October, when the threat of kidney failure left him too weak to rock with his usual conviction. He spends much of his time at home, working his way through a stack of books such as How to Be Good, the Nick Hornby novel that he carried along to lunch this week.

Garron likes the irony of the title. His serious illness, which comes after a history of kidney-stone problems that started as a teenager, is teaching him how to be good. He's eating healthfully and also has lost the notorious appetite for drugs and alcohol that once fueled his rock persona. Self-destructive characters such as Sid Vicious, Hank Williams and Jim Morrison were his role models.

Although he never made it through high school at Bishop Moore and then Evans, Garron is articulate and well-read.

"If it wasn't for my mom and literature, I would have been an idiot," he says.

There's also a sharp sense of humor that surfaces when he announces with a straight face that he's seeking help from the Make-a-Wish Foundation to find his next record label.

When he faced kidney failure during the holidays, Garron suspected that he might follow in their footsteps.

"I was pretty much ready to die when I found out about my kidney failure, but now I think maybe I can leave a better legacy."

A big part of the inspiration is his 7-year-old daughter, Mickenzie. Though he and the girl's mother are no longer together, Garron cherishes his time with the youngster. Her tiny voice, saying "I love you, Daddy," is featured on a bonus track of last year's Precious album Whatever Sinks Your Ship. "You're all I really live for in this world," Garron sings on the poignant acoustic ballad.

There's a sadness even to the love songs on the pessimistically titled Whatever Sinks your Ship. The tone is reflected in songs such as "Pills, Pills Pills," "I'm Sorry" and "I Wanna Die."

"This album is really dark," Garron says. "It was really hard to do, but my feeling is that art definitely has to come through suffering."

Garron is a big fan of such diverse performers as Hank Williams and 50 Cent -- he finds a similar gritty reality unifies their work.

"Songs without emotion and inspiration, either in happiness or pain, are a waste of time. When you're listening to 50 Cent, you can hear him live through that pain. I feel a lot of kinship with him."

After spending two weeks in the hospital in January when an infection caused acute renal failure, Garron says that he is out of immediate danger now. But he's going to need a kidney transplant within two years.

Poking with a fork at his salad, Garron says the new songs he has written, roughly half an album's worth, won't be so darkly obsessed with "the life and death" thing.

"I need a girl," he says. The statement drops bluntly, like many of his phrases. His conversation comes in bursts that sound like couplets in a song; he mentions his perception that others think he is hard to deal with.

Is he?

"I would think not, but I guess so. I don't censor what I say. I tend to speak my mind, and it's not always the popular opinion."

He isn't sure of the future of Precious, but is optimistic that he will have another new album out within a year in one form or another. If Cell isn't interested in the remaining albums due, Garron looks at it as more flexibility for him.

No matter what the future holds, he wants to play music. He asks that I include his email address, stevenprecious@aol .com, for anyone interested in collaborating.

"If I didn't have music to say my conflicted, messed-up things, I don't know why I would suffer through life the way it is."

CLASSIC COMBINATION

Last weekend was my third trip to the fabulous Florida Theatre in Jacksonville, and it's always worth the drive.

Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel played about two hours of authentic Texas swing, the perfect soundtrack for this most glorious concert hall. It's the kind of place they don't make anymore.

Built in 1927 and refurbished in the early 1980s, the Florida Theatre still reflects the Mediterranean Revival architectural style popular in Florida in the 1920s.

The lobby is modeled after a night-time courtyard, with glittering stars and faux balconies. There's a monstrous ceiling above the stage lined with intricate woodwork.

The sound was terrific and the atmosphere intimate, just as it was for the two previous shows I had seen there by Lyle Lovett and John Prine.